Judith DeSena – författare

While most studies on gentrification focus almost exclusively on its causes and consequences through an examination of housing, class conflict, and the displacement of residents, this book analyzes the process of gentrification. Gentrification and Inequality in Brooklyn examines the ways in which the established working-class and lower-income residents of Greenpoint, Brooklyn remain socially segregated from the incoming gentrifiers, with both groups forming parallel cultures within the shared physical spaces of the community. Desena broadens the typical analyses of gentrification to include the grass roots dynamics which create social class relations that lead to residential segregation created by social class relations. Drawing upon areas traditionally under represented in urban sociology, including families, women, children, and local institutions other than housing, this study explores the ways in which working-class residents, in the course of their everyday lives, negotiate change in their neighborhood and dissimilarity with their new (gentry) neighbors. Gentrification and Inequality in Brooklyn touches on issues familiar to anyone who has lived in a multi-class or multi-ethnic community, while offering new perspectives on the ways that such communities develop and maintain the boundaries of social segregation.

The World in Brooklyn: Gentrification, Immigration, and Ethnic Politics in a Global City, is a collection of scholarly papers which analyze demographic, social, political, and economic trends that are occurring in Brooklyn. Brooklyn, as the context, reflects global forces while also contributing to them. The idea for this volume developed as the editors discovered a group of scholars from different disciplines and various universities studying Brooklyn. Brooklyn has always been legendary and has more recently regained its stature as a much sought after place to live, work and have fun. Popular folklore has it that most U.S. residents trace their family origins to Brooklyn. It is presently referred to as one of the “hippest” places in New York. Thus, this book is a collection of demographic, ethnographic, and comparative studies which focus on urban dynamics in Brooklyn. The chapters investigate issues of social class, urban development, immigration, race, ethnicity and politics within the context of Brooklyn.As a whole, this book considers both theoretical and practical urban issues. In most cases the scholarly perspective is on everyday life. With this in mind there are also social justice concerns. Issues of social segregation and attendant homogenization are brought to light. Moreover, social class and race advantages or disadvantages, as part of urban processes, are underscored through critiques of local policy decisions throughout the chapters. A common thread is the assertion by contributors that planning the future of Brooklyn needs to include multi-ethnic, racial, and economic groups, those very residents who make-up Brooklyn.

Protecting One's Turf is a qualitative study that both analyzes informal residential segregation and investigates the effects of racial segregation. The focus of the study is Greenpoint, a working-class neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. The book's first edition chronicled the community-wide strategies employed to maintain a predominantly white community in Greenpoint. The revised edition examines the community's continuing gentrification.

COVID-19 in Brooklyn: Everyday Life During a Pandemic looks closely at the ways that the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the lives of ordinary people living in the super-gentrified Brooklyn neighborhoods of Park Slope and Greenpoint/Williamsburg, where the authors hunkered down during the 2020 lockdown. Putting their private lives into broader scientific and public contexts, Krase and DeSena discuss a wide range of research methods and theories, as well as print and internet media sources about the pandemic. With words and images, the scholar-activist authors place their own personal experiences and those of their family and neighbors inside the broader context of global and national medical emergencies, as well as related economic, social, and political unrest, such as widespread unemployment, the Black Lives Matter Movement, and the contentious 2020 presidential election. Using a distributive social justice perspective and examining their own privileges, they discover and discuss the racial and economic inequities that affected the lives of other Brooklynites. These disparities included public health measures and lack of access to basic necessities of urban living. The book also addresses the cultural and economic shifts that took place at the start of the pandemic and contemplate how those forces will impact on future urban life, asking what the "new normal" of business, entertainment, education, housing, and work will look like locally and globally. This richly illustrated book offers an invaluable local study of the impact of the pandemic on ordinary people in Brooklyn. As such, it will be of great interest to students and researchers in the humanities and social sciences.